Authors Iain Begg | Gabriel Glöckler | Anke Hassel ... - The Europaeum

ich developed country pre-occupation), although the original conception
was as much about economic development. However, the EU has a
distinctive approach which defines three dimensions that are meant to be
pursued in an integrated manner: competitiveness, social cohesion and
environmental objectives, with international development having been
added in 2006 as an external objective. These objectives could be seen as
constituting a socio-economic model for the EU, captured in the SDS and
in the Lisbon strategy, launched in 2000. The trouble though is that this
strategy has had a chequered history. Early drift resulted in strongly
critical reports, notably from the Kok Committee, 2 and culminated in a
re-launch in 2005. What can be labeled Lisbon II plainly became more
than a loose variation on the open method of co-ordination, since it
brought together hard and soft law instruments. It has contributed to a
greater commitment to structural reform and exposed the gaps in
governance that need to be dealt with in certain member states.
For the Barroso Commission, the Lisbon strategy has appeared to be the
core “project”, often giving the impression that competitiveness is the
over-arching goal to which all others have to defer. The open question
which this chapter addresses is whether that orientation can be maintained
in the years to come. Responses to energy and climate change challenges
have risen up the policy agenda in the last three years, adding an Energy
Policy for Europe to the range of EU-level co-ordination processes which
already included one covering social protection and social inclusion, as
well as the Lisbon strategy and the SDS. There is clearly also a need for
improved and co-ordinated responses to the debilitating recession that is
now affecting every member state and threatens to call into question many
of the policy ambitions that seemed to have secured a political consensus
as recently as the summer of 2008.
The fact that these other processes and demands on policymakers now
compete for policy attention raises the vexed question of whether coherent
over-arching goals for EU economic and social governance can be
articulated. There are also continuing uncertainties about whether the
governance of the strategy enables it to yield convincing results. One
verdict, from Laurent Cohen-Tanugi, 3 (emphasis in orginal) is that “Lisbon
is neither the success story the Commission declares it to be, nor the
manifest failure it is sometimes wrongly depicted as being. It has had
mixed results, depending on country and objective, and its success has
been largely tempered for the whole European Union by the mediocre
performances of the major euro-zone economies (France, Italy,
Germany).”
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After the crisis: A new socio-economic settlement for the EU